What Would a Revival Look Like in Thailand?

Jesus said: “I have come to seek and to save that which is lost” Luke 19:10.  The world today is more in need of Jesus than at any other time in my lifetime.  Threats of terrorism, nuclear destruction, “wars and rumors of wars”.  Beloved there is a “fire shut up in my bones” that is why I am here in Thailand and have been for almost two years, self funded except $400 from the Morningside church in Decatur, Illinois.  I have studied the people, the culture, and the condition of the Lord’s Church.  Here are a few simple facts in in my next writing I will go more into detail on this matter.

67,000,000 Thais in:

77 Provinces

926 Districts

7,415 Sub-Districts

80,000 villages

100 congregations of the Lord’s Church

3,500-3,800 members/adherents

This is the current situation in Thailand.  What shall we do? What can we do? Currently the number of Christians make up .000053% of the population compared to .046% in America.  Of course the Church has been in America since 1793 with James O’Kelly.  The church here was established by Parker Henderson in the 1960’s.

There is a vision for Thailand but we need help to bring the vision to life.  The Lord’s people need to establish a presence in every Province first.  At the time of this writing I am uncertain of the provinces we have a presence in.   Currently I am in the process of collecting that information.  Once I have the location of each congregation, I will put the information on my wall map.  Then I will publish a directory of the Lord’s Church for Thailand.

November 30-December 2 there is a lectureship in Bangkok Where, Lord willing I can meet with all the preachers in attendance.  Additionally my hope is to meet with the four Brothers that have some sort of preacher/leadership training school for talks on curriculum and what training is done on evangelism.  Once I have all of this information and we know what our potential strengths and weaknesses are then we can formulate a plan to reach all of Thailand with the Gospel of Christ.

There are many preachers in Thailand that no longer preach for the simple reason the churches are not large enough to support the preachers.  The average Thai salary is said to be 24,000 Baht per month.  Now you may say to yourself that is not bad at all, let me break that down for you in USD.  Twenty-four thousand Baht is equal to about $750 USD.

We must make certain we have the Thai preachers trained in not just preaching, but in how to evangelize the lost souls here in Thailand.  Once they are trained we need to raise support for them.  We can perhaps start a house church in a “shop house” for perhaps 10,000 Baht ($309).  A team of three preachers can move to a province and begin the church and if all three of them actively seek relationships and souls many will be saved.  Currently many good men are good preachers but poor in evangelism.  It is an estimate that there are 35-40 provinces with no Church of Christ.  That means we need 105-120 preachers just to have a presence in a province.  In other words we need to raise awareness, and funds to the tune of 3,400,000 Baht ($106,250) per month for 5 years and those congregations should all be self-sufficient.  To be truly effective we should have congregations in all 926 districts.  That would be a separate phase of the plan.

Beloved there is a great need for revival.  Pray for us in Thailand.  Pray that God continues to open the hearts of the people and pray God sends forth laborers.  The harvest is ready, let us not waste time and allow the fruit to rot, let’s revive this nation for Jesus.

Steve Webb, evangelist

(c) 2017